Monday 6th July.

The day started with a trip to Tim Hortons for breakfast and then some shopping in the hardware store and post office. 

When we got back to the boat, it was warm with very light winds, so we set off towards Maskells harbour on engine.  The winds came and went, engines were off and on, and we ended up sailing hard on the wind in 18-20 knots with reefed main and genny. 

Usually, when we’re sailing, we lift the engines so that they’re not dragging through the water.  Today, the winds were so fickle that we left them down, which was lucky because we came across a lobster buoy, with about 30-40 feet of line floating on the surface.  We were sailing in very light airs without much steerage way, and were able to turn the engines on quickly to avoid the line.  OK, our bad, we should have been passing it on its lee side, but we were quite a distance from it and thought we should have been clear.  So why on earth, would fishermen put floating line on their traps?

We arrived at Maskells  harbor, 46 01.47N 060 46.96W, at about 4pm and it took 3 attempts to set the anchor.  It was well worth it though.  It was a beautiful spot.

One of our purchases in the hardware store this morning was a dowell rod, to enable us to hoist the bullet to the top of the mast where we would get less shadow from the mast as the boat swings on anchor.  We rigged this up and were surprised to find a wifi connection in this relatively remote location. 

A short while after we arrived, another sailboat anchored about 100ft behind us.  We didn’t take much notice of them while we were fiddling with wifi antenna, but when we looked again, they were about 500ft behind us.  Ron thought they were dragging, so took the dinghy over to warn them.  It turned out they decided to re-anchor in a different location – we simply didn’t notice. 

Ships Log: 4610.8, Todays Log: 28.6, Seasons Total: 162.9